Maltin forges his own persona as film critic

Call them the Seven Wonders of the (Film) World.

There is a set of indispensable books that should be on the shelves or end tables of film critics and film buffs everywhere. The first five are James Agee's terse, classic "On Film"; Pauline Kael's brash, emotional "I Lost It at the Movies"; David Thomson's erudite and provocative The Biographical Dictionary of Film; and the two periodically updated guides popularized by the late British movie critic and historian Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion and Halliwell's Film Guide.

The sixth and seventh of the group are perhaps the most useful and up-to-date as a ready reference of distilled reviews: the annually updated Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide and its recently introduced companion book, Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide.

Maltin is back with the 2009 edition — his 39th — of the best-selling Movie Guide (Plume Original), and with nearly 17,000 films, it remains one of the most reliable resources.

A buff's buff, Maltin wrote his first published movie guide at 17, and has never looked back. But, no, he does not write all the reviews himself, as some assume.

"Yes, they do. But I hasten to tell them that I never pretended they were all mine," says Maltin. "My colleagues and associates are always credited on the title page. Still, I think people are always mildly disappointed that I haven't seen everything. I have seen an awful lot of them, though I can't give you an exact count."

Bill of fare

In any given year, Maltin will view upward of 250 new movies, yet this is but one facet of his work as a writer and broadcaster on film.

"Editing the guide is not a full-time job, but it's constant. Everything I see and hear and read is putting information on my radar. Some weeks are quieter than others. And, of course, I also love watching old movies, too. Every March, my wife and I go to a wonderful gathering in Syracuse, N.Y., called Cine-fest, where we see four or five old movies a day over the course of four days."

Maltin's decades of experience and passion for the art form might have angled him to a particular school of thought on film, those embodied by such venerated critics as Kael, her arch rival, Andrew Sarris, or Stanley Kauffmann. Not so.

"None of the above, really, and I don't mean that to sound arrogant. I admire them all. You can easily get Olympian about it, especially when you start talking about those people. I think I sort of walk my own path. I'm a middle-brow guy. I can't write like, nor am I as dogmatic as, Kael. I'm not as eloquent as Kauffmann. Over the years, you do it long enough and regularly enough that you forge your own persona as a critic, for better or worse."

There is no touchstone in the books that distinguishes his reviews from those of his co-contributors, says Maltin. Were that the case, it would be a lesser book in his estimation.

"The highest compliment I get, which comes now and then, is when people say the book has a consistent tone. That means I'm doing my job as the editor. Everything gets filtered through me."

Culling process

With many hundreds of new films debuting globally each year, the movie guide would be immense if titles were not culled as part of the updating process. For Maltin, it's a necessary and often painful process.

"Well, we didn't have to do it at all for a long time. It's only in the last decade that we've had to excise titles. Painful? Oh, please! Like knitting needles driven into my spine. I hate it. At first, we started trimming out the lesser made-for-TV movies, then the better made-for-TV movies. Then some lesser theatrical releases.

"That was the first step. We haven't done anything quite so drastic since, until three years ago when we concocted the idea of a second book on classic films. We hoped that would be a broader answer to the dilemma. Again, we took out the lesser old movies in the original book, but you'll always be able to look up 'A Night at the Opera' or 'Ben-Hur' or 'It's a Wonderful Life' there. Many that we were forced to take out are now in the alternate guide. While we were doing this whole new book, we had the elbow room to cover some 1,100 titles we had not covered before."

The first lesson Maltin learned is that it is all about the writing, editing and fact-checking.

Both guides undergo a system of checks and balances that makes a difference in terms of accuracy.

"Another hard lesson was that in a reference book everything has equal weight. That's a tough one, because when you are spending an inordinate amount of time double-checking the spelling of the name of an actor in some schlocky Grade Z horror movie from 1961, you're saying, 'Is this really worth my time?' The answer's 'No,' but it still has to get done. It all has to be done right. 'Get it right' has been my watchword for 40 years."

New information and revisionist film histories also affect the process.

"As films are restored and we get alternate versions, if you will, you have to deal with that. I'm a little jaundiced about some of these alternate versions and director's cuts, but I have to at least acknowledge them. We have to stay alert and be on our toes."

Caught in the Web

Maltin casts a wary eye at the Internet and its legion of movie Web sites.

"We live in a time where young people believe that anything and everything you need is available online. We all use online sources of information. I certainly do. But I still think there's something about a project like ours, done by individual human beings you can name, who can take credit and/or blame for the results, that gives you a different feel. I'm very skeptical about relying on things I get online."

As for the much-maligned star rating system used by his guides and the great majority of daily newspapers, a system that's been accused of cheapening film criticism, Maltin says he finally had to acquiesce.

"I fought it the moment it was imposed upon me by my first editor on the book. I said, 'That's so arbitrary. How do you really quantify your feelings about a film?' And he said, 'No, people love it. They love to have that shorthand and they love to respond to it, to argue with it.' And he was right. I still have misgivings about it, but there we are."

Had he been offered a post with the job description "film historian" in his early years, Maltin says he would have put in an application.

"I've been very, very lucky to be able to use my love of film history at every available opportunity in what I do, in my writing and my broadcasts. But for gainful employment, it's being a film critic."

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.